HERE are 12 takeaways from Michael O’Leary’s press briefing in Dublin

Some takeaways from Michael O’Leary’s press conference yesterday:

Aircraft Orders and Deliveries: “We have 300 Boeing 737s on order. We will get the last 20 of the max 800s, 16 of them before Christmas and then four in January and February.”
Market Share Expansion: “As a result of that, we’re making market share gains right across the EU. We’re growing our share in Italy, Spain, Poland, Morocco, where we’re the number one airline now, in all those markets, having overtaken the incumbent, of the flag carrier or, in England, Easyjet.”
EU Aviation Competitiveness: “The Draghi report highlighted that continuing in effect, the continuing inefficiencies of the European ATC market posed a $6bn annual cost on passengers and airlines.”
Air Traffic Control Reforms: “We, the airlines across Europe have called for two simple reforms on air traffic control, to protect the first wave of morning flights. And if your air traffic controller reports in sick you have a standby air traffic controller there to replace him. This is something that they already do by law in Spain, Italy, and Greece. The problem is they don’t do it in France, and when the French have an air traffic control strike, they just shut the sky, cancel all the over flights, but they use minimum service legislation to protect the French flights.”
Aviation Tax Abolition: “The good news, the positive news for passengers, is that many countries across Europe, Sweden, Hungary, Albania, four of the bigger regions in Italy are now abolished aviation taxes, or environmental taxes on aviation.”
Dublin Airport Passenger Cap: “The 32m Dublin cap has been put on stay, not thanks to our useless government, but thanks entirely to the court action taken by the Irish Airlines, mainly Ryanair Aer Lingus.”
Night-Time Flight Restrictions: “We are actually slightly in a wry way, welcomed the second illegal cap imposed by those idiots in An Coimisiún Pleanála recently, which now limits the nighttime movements, or rather, the arrivals of trans Atlantic aircraft between the hours of 5 and 7 o’clock in the morning. It means that it’s going to antagonise the American Airlines. The American Airlines will complain to the White House and the White House will then stop Aer Lingusl flights landing in New York or nto North America. And then Micheál Martin and Simon Harris will probably pass legislation within 24 hours under threat from the White House, where when he was left of their own devices, they’ve been sitting on their hands for two years.”
Operations in Ireland: “In Ireland this year, we have operating seven airports, four bases, we have 43 aircraft based here on the island an investment of over four, almost four and a halfbn. We’re operating 234 routes, including 40 routes this winter.”
Digital Boarding Passes: “We are going to force everybody onto the mobile phones. We delayed into the middle of November, so when we are in the winter schedule, we will certainly be reasonably forgiving of people showing up with their paper boarding passes.”
Environmental Taxation Critique: “We have this mad system in Europe, where we’re taxing ETS, which is the environmental taxation on air travel. It’s only applied on the European Airlines, are on flights within Europe. We exempt all the non European Airlines, so any flight arriving in from outside of Europe is exempt from paying their fair share of environmental taxes. At the moment, we have the Europeans paying 100pc and the non Europeans being completely exempt despite the fact that the non European flights account for 53pc of European aviation.”
Environmental tax: “We will pay about €1.1bn in ETS taxes. That’s about five euro 50 per passenger. The environmental loonies claim air travel is not taxed. It is penally taxed at the moment. and the problem is that money is being squandered, €350m of our ETS revenues gets returned back to the Department of transport, €50m get subbed down to the EPA, and €270m gets routed back to the Department of Transport so we can fund the school bus fleet. I don’t begrudge the children getting the school bus flreet, but that should be paid by the Department of Education not, by my passengers.”